My husband and I got married young, without any real means to support ourselves. Throughout the years, I did many part time work from home jobs, from telemarketing to customer service to content writing to child care and every one of them had their down sides, but at the same time, I realized how beneficial work from home opportunities are, especially the flexible ones, because I was able to fit them into my life, and be able to earn an income from the comfort of my own home.
I recently learned about a company called VIPKID, an online education platform that teaches English to Chinese kids from kindergarten through 12th grade. A friend of mine, Rachel, teaches English to Chinese kids through the internet, and I’ve heard such amazing things from her, about how much she loves it, how she loves learning about their culture while teaching them, and visa versa, and I was fascinated by the concept.
VIPKID is a great way to earn money from the comfort of your own home, with flexible hours and decent pay- teachers for VIPKID on average make $19 an hour. Unlike many teaching opportunities, with VIPKID you don’t need to create lesson plans or a curriculum- you’re given everything you need to teach your students in a 1:1 environment.
Since many of my blog readers are stay at home moms, homeschooling moms, or otherwise people who could use extra cash but may not have the time to work (more) outside the home than they are already, I thought this opportunity would suit many of you.
To be eligible for this opportunity, you need to have a bachelors degree in any field, one school year’s worth of full time teaching or equivalent hours in similar educational activities, whether homeschooling, tutoring, educational mentoring, etc. You also have to be eligible to work in the US or Canada. You do NOT need to speak Chinese to teach.
Started in 2013, VIPKID is the fastest growing online education company globally, with over 200,000 students as of the summer of 2017, and is the official provider of the TOEFL Primary assessment in China, the English exam students take to get into international and American Universities, as well as being a Strategic Partner of TESOL International Association, the largest global association for English language teaching professionals and a Partner of Coursera, an online learning pioneer. It is backed by Kobe Bryant, Sequoia Capital, Learn Capital, Tencent, Matrix Partners, Sinovation Ventures etc.
VIPKID caters to the growing middle class in China, and it’s a win win situation- Chinese families get their children a quality education for a food price, and teachers can make supplemental money on their own time.
VIPKID cares about its social impact- their research institute at Stanford is studying how children learn languages and they have rural schools in China with the Jack Ma Foundation, wherein VIPKID teachers get connected to a lower income rural school and teach English to the class, virtually.
VIPKID has a supportive staff and teachers who work for them consider it to be very fun.
What makes VIPKID different?
Their teacher community (of 20,000 teachers!) with a supportive culture online as well as at meetups offline to give support around passing the interview, preparing for classes, sharing teaching experiences, teachers meetups etc..
Their curriculum that is always being fine tuned.
Their technology that provides the platform for the online lessons.
And their engaged, motivated, and invested students, the best types of students to teach.
So how does it work?
VIPKID uses a flipped classroom approach- first the students learn the material independently, then they get a 30 minute lesson with the teacher. It’s like being on a Skype call with an interactive power point presentation for lesson plans- created by the VIPKID curriculum team which takes the pressure off the teachers. This means that the teachers can just focus on what they love, teaching, without the extra prep work, lesson planning, or grading. After they finish teaching, the students receive virtual homework and practice games.
They have reviews on more than 20,000 user-generated/teacher-generated YouTube videos, their 60,000+ raving Facebook fans, and the highly positive reviews on Glassdoor and Indeed. According to Forbes, VIPKID is a Top Five work from home company, and they constantly offer incentives including cash, prizes, even trips to Beijing!
If you like to travel, or live in a rural area far from most jobs, or maybe even are an American expat, this opportunity can work for you, as you have your flexible hours and can work from anywhere! While this works great part time, if you have more available time and more need of cash, you can do this full time as well.
To sign up click here. The process is as follows: you first fill out basic info (5 minutes), then do a 10 minute teaching sample, either by virtual interview or recorded, then have a 2-3 hour intro to teaching, a 2-4 hour mock class, contract signing, and then start teaching kids.
So what are you waiting for? Go sign up for VIPKID today, having fun and making money at the save time!
See my disclaimer.
